


Sing me a song, O muse.

by someinstant



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/M, Gen, I'm Serious, Self-Indulgent, The Odyssey References, This will remain permanently unfinished, post-modern nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22531579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: You could say please, you know.* Note: this is going to be permanently unfinished.  I've spent too much time on this to let it sit in the shadows forever, but I've lost the flow and I doubt I'll get it back.  So I'm releasing it to the universe.  Enjoy a mess of a story about growing up and skating and narrative structure andThe Odyssey, and just let it be what it is.  An unfinished story is still a story, after all.
Relationships: Scott Moir & Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir/Tessa Virtue
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	1. Tell me about a complicated man.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t going to be at all what you think it should be. Sorry about that. Also: this is a ridiculous work of fiction with post-modern pretensions, a bunch of Classical allusions, and it’s about Real People who would probably be Deeply Uncomfortable if they ever read this, and about whose interior lives I know absolutely nothing-- so, you know: hit that back button if it’s not your jam. And if you are one of the Real People mentioned herein, please accept my sincere apologies, and know that I am well aware that none of this is remotely true.

> Tell me about a complicated man.
> 
> Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
> 
> when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
> 
> and where he went, and who he met, the pain 
> 
> he suffered in the storms at sea, and how 
> 
> he worked to save his life and bring his men
> 
> back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
> 
> they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
> 
> kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
> 
> tell the old story for our modern times.
> 
> Find the beginning.1

* * *

“I dislike being made always to tell stories,” she says at the start. “Although, it isn’t the stories’ fault, you understand.”

“I do,” he says. “The stories are fine, and there is joy in finding the right words, and greater joy in sharing them, and one always appreciates the audience’s response. But I, too, resent being merely a device.”

“Precisely,” she agrees. “It’s the notion that I don’t exist except in relation to the telling that I find upsetting-- that I walk into a scene as a witness, and out again as a vehicle for narration, and in between my life is to give voice to an audience. And once those obligations are fulfilled, I cease to exist. But what of my Netflix queue? My water bill and houseplants? What of the handfuls of bobby pins I found under my couch cushions yesterday? Surely I have greater purpose than to be an interrupting phone call during an emotionally fraught moment.”

“Easy, Rosencrantz,” he says.2 “It’s a little early to break the fourth wall.”

“That isn’t my name, and we’re not in a play, and there are no walls,” Jordan snaps. 

“I know,” he says. “It was a reference. Just like everything else. I was only trying to establish theme.” There is a pause, an inhalation of the sort before the concert begins, before the conductor, her back to the audience, rolls her neck, lifts her baton, and--

“Did I ever tell you,” Danny says, inevitable as rain, “about

-*-

The time he ran away from home and got lost? No? I wasn’t there for the beginning, but listen:

It was the summer before he turned eleven, and they all ran wild, the younger neighborhood kids, a pack of dogs roving from house to house and yard to yard until the streetlights cut on after sundown, only coming home for lemonade and pilfered bags of Doritos. Imagine the air, still and thick with damp rising up from the grasses, crickets humming in the unmowed fields, the electricity of a storm on the horizon, late summer heat burying itself inside the walls of houses to wait out the night.

And when he tumbled back home one evening, grass-stained and bitten over with mosquitoes, Mum and Aunt Carol were sitting in the kitchen, drinking wine and comparing calendars. Mum caught him by the sleeve as he barreled past, saying, “Look at you, you’re a mess, Scott,” and then, “We need to talk about hockey for this year.” He went still the way rabbits do in the field, under threat of something toothed and exponentially larger.

We had already had this discussion, five or six years earlier, Mum and Aunt Carol and me: that if we were serious about skating, if Sheri and I really wanted to compete, we would have to let go of some things. Swim team in summer, hockey in the fall, soccer in the spring-- we cut them loose like bothersome anchors and sailed on. But I didn’t love hockey the way Scott did, and it never loved me, either. Hockey for Scott was the moon, a shifting target that pulled the seas, wine-dark, first one way and then another: he was good, he was fast, he was too small, he didn’t have the hands. It held him fast amid changing tides, a canny goddess, impossible to escape. But he didn’t much want to, anyway.

It was the problem of time, Mum explained: travel hockey league games would overlap with competitions in ice dance, and it wouldn’t be fair to either his hockey teammates or Tessa to try to do both. It would have to be one or the other. “You can’t be in two places at once, baby,” she told him. “So we have to figure out what you want most.”

Aunt Carol swears he answered without hesitation, declaring himself for skating with the surety of an oracle. Mum says he went quiet, and asked if Tessa would be mad if he picked hockey, and when she said, “Don’t worry about Tessa, worry about you,” he said, “Skating, I guess,” with a shrug, casual, raising sails to catch the wind.

Neither is probably true. Scott would be the one to know, but I’m not sure if he acknowledges the truth anymore: Mum and Aunt Carol have told their versions so often that whatever story he tells himself now is in keeping with their narratives. Family legend is a familiar and forgetful drug. But the decision to turn towards skating and away from hockey, to build a raft, cut loose the anchor and fight the currents, wasn’t as easy as they say it was, because he wasn’t in his bedroom an hour later when Mum sent me upstairs to relay the message that she hadn’t heard the shower run yet, and if he thought he was getting into bed without one he had another thing coming.

“He isn’t there,” I told her, because he wasn’t: his bed was an empty mess of sheets, and the window beside it was wide open. “I think he went out the window,” I said, which should have been a stranger sentence in my mouth, but wasn’t. Mum and Dad loved the front porch for quiet conversations in the evening, but my brothers and I loved it for the ease it lent to climbing in and out of our bedroom windows. Charlie went out the window for girls, Scott went out for friends, and I went out to wander.

“If God had given me daughters, I swear,” Mum said, and then, “He’ll be over at Taylor’s.”

But he wasn’t at Taylor’s, or at Liam’s, or any of the others, and there was lightning off in the distance as she hung up the phone, her mouth a tight flat line. “I’m going to get your father,” she said. “I don’t know where he’s got off to, but I’m going to strangle him when I find him.”

“Did he take his bike?” I asked. 

Mum shook her head. “He would have had to open the garage door, and I would have heard that. He’s on foot.”

“I’ll get a flashlight and check out back,” I said. “He was talking about seeing a fox out by the back shed yesterday. Maybe he’s out that way.”

“Take a jacket,” Mum said. “It’s going to rain.”

“He’s fine, Mum,” I said, awkward, because seventeen is old enough to recognize when comfort is required, but young enough to be shit at delivering it.

“I know,” she said, and smiled, a weak thing that didn’t reach her eyes. “Take a jacket.”

He wasn’t at the shed, and neither was the fox. There was a circle of bent grass and packed dirt, though, hidden under the shallow overhang of a rock nearby. I directed the flashlight towards it, aware the den was far too small for Scott to be hiding there, but it seemed more likely he’d be in there than inside the shed, which was creepy even in daylight, full of Dad’s tools and spiders and the occasional dead field mouse. I checked it anyway: pulled the lawn mower out, ducked my head under the sagging workbench, just to check he wasn’t curled up in a ball next to the bags of ice melt.

“What the hell, Scott,” I said, trying to stay pissed off, because it was better than letting the seed of worry grow. The wind blew ozone ahead of rain, sharp and clean, and I tried to think.

Ten is a little old to be running away in a fit of pique, and Scott didn’t rebel often, but when he did-- he committed to the drama of it. Ask Charlie about the time he refused to let a six-year-old Scott help him build a Lego city: he’ll tell you how Scott sat and watched him build streets and towers and houses for more than an hour, and then when Charlie was done, how Scott swept a short but righteous arm across the table, sending the city to the floor in bright pieces, and then ran off giggling, pleased with his destruction.

The world was wide, but not for a ten-year-old in southern Ontario. There were really only two directions Scott could have gone: towards town, or away from it. And if he went towards town, it was probably in the direction of the rink, and Mum and Dad knew that. I heard Dad’s truck start in the driveway, thought,_Yeah, he’ll be at the rink._ But with the first drops of the storm arriving, I turned my flashlight to the woods at the sloping edge of the back field, down towards the creek, because that was the stupider, more dramatic place for Scott to have run off to.

I pulled up my hood-- Mum was right about the jacket, because mothers are always right about jackets-- and set out across the field, calling out his name. “This is really fucking dumb, Scott,” I remember yelling, a moment before a branch of lightning hit, too close, everything turning violet and green and stark white in a moment. “Fuck,” I said, ducking, and set off at a run for the woods, where I wouldn’t be the tallest thing around. It was downhill, the footing uneven, and slick in the rain: my left foot caught a burrow-- groundhog, maybe-- and I went down hard, flashlight cutting out as it hit the ground in my grasp, the clap of thunder covering the shocked, “Oh _shit_,” I let out as I realized that I’d definitely wrenched something.

“Okay, _fuck_, not good,” I said, forehead against the ground, my hands muddy with the fall. I rocked forward on my knees, pulling my left foot up and out of the way, the restless movement of a linebacker sprawled on the ground after a hard hit, seeking proof that not everything is broken, and then rolled onto my back, trying to breathe through it. The rain hit my face in enormous, angry drops. I sat up, and tried the flashlight. Nothing; I’d cracked the battery housing by landing with my full weight on it. I tried my ankle, which was slightly more successful: vertical motion was okay, lateral was shitty, but nothing worse than I’d had a million times before on the ice. It definitely didn’t have the sick, something-is-very-wrong deep ache of a fracture, but it would still be a few days of ice and elevation and compression wraps at a minimum. At least it wasn’t competition season yet. 

Another shard of lightning, the clap of thunder following so close on its heels that it was impossible to separate them, and I scrambled to my feet, abandoning the broken flashlight and ignoring the throb at my ankle as I unevenly hauled ass towards cover. 

Leaves trembled like a forest of wings beneath the aspens, sheltering something greater and more vast, an ocean at war with an errant shoreline. That was the creek, down a rocky bank, invisible in the wet dark of the storm. It was normally placid if sharply cold, but the summer storms of the week previous had swollen it beyond its usual banks and turned it muddy with upturned stones and choking branches.

It would be an easy thing, I realized, for a kid to slip on the bank in the storm, to hit their head, to tangle themselves under the water, to gasp for air. I could see it play out like a movie in my head: Scott sliding, his hands full of something, going into the water with a crash, pulled under and out of sight.

“_Scott_,” I called, panicked for the first time, and stumbled blindly downstream, hands catching on peeled white trunks and brambles as I picked my way down, ankle screaming, trying not to think about how the fuck I was ever going to make it back up. “_SCOTT_,” I called, and my heart was pounding in my ears so loudly I nearly missed the answering cry.

There was a cough, wet and rasping, and then: “Danny?,” and there he was, on the far side of the creek, maybe three meters away, just out of reach: a pale-faced blur hidden under a thicket of wax-leaved winterberry.

“Oh, thank fucking christ,” I said, lightheaded with relief. “You okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” he said, standing up, holding his hockey stick for some goddamn reason. He was drenched, and there looked to be a ragged cut on his shin, a thin wash of blood sneaking down to his sock. “I slipped, and then I couldn’t get out, and when I did I couldn’t figure out how to get back across.” Lightning flashed again, and there was something submerged in the dark waters parallel to his position, the creek rolling over a log or a stone or something with implacable, unrelenting force. Could have been him, easy. “The current’s really fast, Danny,” he said, and sounded like he was trying not to cry.

“Okay, Scott, it’s okay,” I said, and tried to think. “Let’s go upstream a bit, where it’s shallower, eh? And if we can’t get you across there, I’ll go back home for help.” He nodded, and we set off, slow and careful, parallel along the narrow banks. I grabbed at exposed roots and bushes for purchase, hoping they’d hold my weight if I went down. On the other bank, Scott was using his hockey stick like a cane, planting it carefully, handle down into the mud, before every step. “Why’d you come down here with your hockey stick, anyway?” I asked, trying not to think about the growing pulse low in my left leg. I wasn’t doing it any favors. “It’s definitely too warm for a shinny.”

He was a little ahead of me, so I saw his shoulders shrug under his dirty yellow shirt. “I dunno, nothing,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, relief giving way to anger in a flash. “Whatever. You climbed out the window in a thunderstorm, scared Mum to death, I nearly got electrocuted trying to find you, and you could have fucking _drowned_, but fine, sure, _nothing_ sounds like a great answer.”

He stopped walking, shoulders high and shaking, the line of his back curled in misery. I felt like shit; the poor dumb kid had been scared to death, and here I was yelling at him. “I’m sorry,” I said, getting a little farther upstream and turning to face him. “Hey. Hey, buddy, I’m sorry,” I said. “You just scared the shit out of me, that’s all.”

“‘M sorry,” he said, shaking his head, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He looked exhausted. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” I told him. I looked at the creek-- it was wider where we were, maybe four meters across, the water dark rippling glass, not tripping violently over debris or eddying in pools. “I think it’s shallower here, kid. You want to try it?”

“Not really,” he said, but took a step closer to the water, face resolute. 

“Hang on,” I said. “Let’s plan it out first, eh?” I fished around in the underbrush blindly until I found a loose branch, then edged down to the water. “Let’s see how deep we’re talking about.” I reached out as far as I could and sank one end of the branch down to find the bottom. About halfway to my knees, it looked like, so-- the middle was maybe double that? That would be close to Scott’s waist, or at least the middle of his thighs. I let go of the branch, and tried to gauge how fast the current was. _Fast_ was the answer, but not as fast as I’d been afraid of.

“Okay,” I said, taking off my jacket. It didn’t matter at this point; the rain was slowing, and I was about to get soaked anyway. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said, and reached out to try the strength of a branch leaning a little way over the creek. It didn’t bend. I tried pulling myself up on it a few inches, and it creaked, but held. “I’m gonna tie my jacket to the branch like a rope, and walk out as far as I can towards you while holding on. You’re gonna face upstream, and cross in a diagonal to me, okay? Get steady on your feet, and then plant your stick before you move each time. Go as slow as you have to, okay?” 

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. I saw him take a breath, and nod again. “I can do that.”

“Yeah, you can,” I told him. I tied one sleeve over the branch, just before a Y-bend, and knotted a loop in the remaining sleeve; that would be my handhold. I slid it over my wrist and grabbed the fabric. Tugged as hard as I could. The knots felt solid. “Let me come out towards you first,” I said. “If it’s too fast, I don’t want you to try it.” I eased my way into the waters: first my right foot, then, gingerly, my left. “Shit, fuck, that’s cold,” I said as the water flooded my runners, and tried not to think of Scott going under in that. Shuffled slowly forwards until my right arm was fully extended and the current pulled hard at my knees. I gave up trying to rest most of my weight on my good leg, dug in hard with my left, and resigned myself to a week or so on crutches. “Okay,” I said, looking downstream to where Scott was, and reached out my left hand. “You’ve just gotta make it to my hand, kid. That’s maybe a dozen steps. You can do it.”

On the other bank, he nodded, face set. He turned upstream, and reached out with his stick like a blind soothsayer, and stepped forward, one foot, then the other, into the current. 

It took maybe two minutes, all told, but I don’t think I breathed until his cold right hand wrapped around my wrist. “Got you,” I said, latching on and grinding the bones of his wrist under my fingers, “I’ve got you, Scott,” and he dropped his hockey stick into the creek and clutched at me with his left hand, too.

We lurched awkwardly to shore, shipwrecked, me reeling in my makeshift tether and trying to keep us both upright on an ankle I couldn’t feel, Scott clinging to me like an octopus, his fingers scratched and bloody at the knuckles. “That worked,” I said, breathless, and sat with a thump down into the mud, my feet still in the water. Scott went down with me, shaking hard. “Holy shit, that worked.” I slid my right hand out of the looped end of the jacket; it was a little purple. I rubbed it, hard, along Scott’s spine, trying to get some feeling back into it, and some warmth into him.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “You okay?” He nodded. Sniffed, and turned his head so I couldn’t see him crying. “Good,” I said, and hugged him tighter. Tried moving my ankle again. The feeling was starting to come back, and I really wished it wouldn’t. Vertical movement was shitty, and lateral movement was really, extremely not going to happen without a lot of embarrassing screaming. “So this is the fun part,” I said, and tried to scoot away from the water’s edge, my hands sinking into the grit and mud. My waterlogged shoes pulled at my feet: heavy to lift on my right, a labor of Herculean strength on my left. There was no way I was getting back up the bank without some serious assistance.

“Yeah?” said Scott. His face was a mess, but I wasn’t going to tease. I figured he was more than allowed to cry, given he’d spent the better part of an hour scared to death.

I nodded. “Yep. This is the part where you get to run home, really fucking fast, because my ankle’s busted and there’s no way I’m getting back up the bank without help, and Mum’s probably about ready to call the cops by now.” I showed him my ankle, which had started to swell impressively. 

“What about you?” Scott said, standing up, his movements stiff. He brushed uselessly at the grit on his hands and knees, and I could see a bruise was rising up around the split skin on his shin.

“I’m just gonna chill here until you get back with the cavalry,” I told him. “I’m good. Hey,” I told him, “untie the jacket and put it on, eh? Your lips are turning blue.”

“You’re cold, too,” he argued, untying the knots far, far too easily for my peace of mind, considering how much weight I’d been putting on it. 

“I’m bigger,” I said. “I’ll live. And I didn’t fall into a creek and almost die. And if you don’t take it, I’m going to tell Mum that the reason you came down here was to be a dramatic moron and give your hockey stick a burial at sea in the middle of a storm, so you’re going to take the damn jacket and shut up about it.”

Scott’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t,” he started, and I snapped, “Don’t fucking lie to me, you did. I don’t know why,” I said, “because your brain is weird sometimes and I don’t get it, but that’s what you were doing.”

He put on the jacket. The sleeves were way too long and he knotted his hands up in the excess fabric. “Don’t tell Mum, okay?”

I leaned on my elbows, said, “I won’t. Now go, okay? My ankle’s killing me and I’d like to get out of the mud at some point.” He started scrambling up the embankment, clumsy, shoes sliding as he went. “Hey,” I called up at him when he reached the top. “Tell her you went to go look for the fox, okay? And then you came down to the woods to get out of the storm and slipped. We’ll go looking for your stick tomorrow. It might have got caught up in some of the branches downstream.”

“Okay,” he said, and then, “Thanks for coming to get me, Danny,” before taking off at a run.

I lay back, adrenaline retreating like a tide going out, listening to the rain drip steadily, leaf on leaf, down to the undergrowth. The frogs were singing, loud and atonal, and I kicked a rock over with my right foot to try and find something I could elevate my bad leg with. I tried to figure out if it would be better to take off my shoe-- my foot was starting to ache against the laces as it swelled-- but wasn’t sure that was smart, considering how I’d eventually have to make it to the house. Thought about how taking a first aid class would probably not be a bad idea. Wilderness first aid, even. Maybe an Outward Bound course.

I closed my eyes, and thought about mountains.

“He’s over here, sort of under a bush,” I heard Scott say, some time later, and then there were three flashlights bobbing into view, Mum and Dad and Charlie, back from his girlfriend’s in time for the denouement, all aiming their beams in my face.

“Hey,” I said, and waved. Mum had Scott wrapped tight under her arm, holding his hand like she was afraid he’d disappear again. Charlie had an extra jacket with him. And Dad, bless him, had a back strong enough to help haul me slowly towards home.

* * *

  1. Homer, Emily R. Wilson, and Homer. 2018. _The Odyssey_.
  2. Rosencrantz, first name unknown, is both a character in William Shakespeare’s quintessential tragedy, _Hamlet_, and also Tom Stoppard’s 1966 play-in-the-wings,_ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ which explores the roles and existential dread of the two titular characters through extremely wordy and post-modern metaphors. The author has no idea whether or not Danny Moir has read either of these works, but she would like to think so, because she really just wants a character to say, “I’ve frequently not been on boats,” and it might as well be him. Although: she did just imply that Jordan was Rosencrantz, didn’t she? Shit.


	2. Poets are not to blame for how things are.

“It was well told,” she says with a sigh, content. “Book five?”

“Thank you,” he says. “And-- yes. I was aiming for a parallel to Calypso and the escape. Did it serve?”

“Very well, I thought,” she says. “It’s hard to work in an octopus and a shipwreck in southern Ontario, but you did it.”

The silence is comfortable, until it isn’t. “Hm,” he says, and then, “Have you any idea where we are, by the by? Or when? The author hasn’t given any details, and it seems odd that we’re just here, in this liminal space, telling stories to no one.”

“But isn’t that how fiction works?” she asks. “The story offered up to the void, a burnt offering of time and creation to the audience.” She waves a hand-- apparently she has those, the first indication of independent corporeal form-- gesturing to the faint column of smoke rising in the distance. If there is a distance.

“Did they make burnt offerings to the muses? Do they?” he asks. “And if so, is that what we are?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m either a muse, or a window to peer through, or the get-a-grip friend in a romcom, in which case we might be in a coffee shop,” she offers. “It seems a traditional staging for this medium, doesn’t it?”

“I think that’s just because coffee shops are useful as a third space outside of the home and workplace, and therefore a potentially neutral and accessible environment in which characters may interact freely, although it’s obviously worth noting that access to these spaces is largely idealized by non-marginalized groups,” he says.3

“True,” she says. “And I see that the footnotes are going to continue, which seems an unnecessary affectation. But I’m comfortable with being in a coffee shop if you are. I could do with some caffeine if we’re going to be used as a frame story throughout.”

“I hate frame stories,” he says, the espresso machine screeching in the background like a vengeful harpy. “Too circuitous.”

“Mm, me too,” she says, taking a sip of her coffee. “What are they but an unnecessary deviation from the central plot?”

“They’re an admission that the author lacks the skill to tie disparate stories together,” Danny says. “Entirely without merit.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Jordan says, and then, “And yet that does nothing to lessen the demands of structure. So: funny story. Let me tell you

-*-

About the summer she grew up, and tried to fight it. I should say it’s only funny from the outside, only funny if you’ve never been an inch past fourteen and aching down to your bones, which is to say it isn’t funny at all.

She looked stretched and tired when we came to pick her up in Waterloo at the end of the school term, her hair braided back so tightly I could see the pulse beat, blue and rapid, behind the thin skin of her temple, drifting and uncomfortable at Dad’s side as he thanked her host parents on the front stoop while I slung her bags into the back of the van. There were three of them for a four week break from training, and each weighed approximately the same as the rock of Gibraltar.

“She must have eaten you out of house and home,” Dad joked, pulling her against him and chucking her lightly under the chin. She hated when he did that; I had, too, when I was her age. “I swear,” he said, still holding her under his arm, “she’s grown at least an inch over the last couple of months,” and the adults all laughed and agreed: yes, she was getting so tall, so grown up, and I watched as her face stilled, a blank and pleasant mask, false as deep water. 

“Take the front, shrimp,” I told her as we left, shutting the back of the van and hugging her, light around the shoulders, her bones cutting into my side, sharp and fine like a bird’s. She _was_ taller-- up to my collarbone and unhappy. “We’ve got to pick up Scott, too, and I bet you’re sick of him,” I told her, and she said, “Oh,” hands twisting in the straps of her purse, clutching it tight, and then, “No, I’m not sick of him,” but I shoved her into the front passenger seat anyway, willing in my frustration to sacrifice her for smooth sailing on the way home. Dad had spent most of the drive to Waterloo grilling me about my marks for the previous semester and their subsequent effect on my GPA and scholarships and I wanted a change of venue.

Scott was ready to go when we got there, a duffle and his skate bag on his shoulder, and he didn’t wait for Dad to put the van in park-- just yelled something back through the doorway and waved to someone out of sight. Jogged to the back of the van and tossed his duffle in, then settled his skate bag on top, deliberate and precise.

“Thanks for the ride, Mr. Virtue,” he said, tumbling in and sliding his door shut. “Hey, Jordan. I didn’t know you were coming to get us, too.” And Tess might have looked distant, a shore unrecognizable, but Scott was the same as always: skinny knees jittering with energy under his basketball shorts, voice still high and sweet.

“Dad promised me a milkshake and I’m not working today,” I told him. “I’m easily bought.” It was true; my bank account was basically nil after two terms of books and beers and occasional bad decisions, and my gas tank was suffering as a result. Both it and I were pretty much on empty until I picked up enough shifts to fill it. The milkshake hadn’t manifested yet, though. I suspected it had been a ploy to give Dad an opportunity to read me the Riot Act about responsibility while dodging potholes on the highway. 

“Cool, cool,” Scott said, head bobbing. His hair was flat on one side, like he’d just rolled out of bed. His shirt was wrinkled, tag sticking out at the collar, and when he leaned forward between the front seats, a cloying wave of body spray followed. Thus puberty announces its intentions.

He stuck out his right fist. “Hey, Tess.” She met his hand without turning to look, knuckle to knuckle, and they did a weird one-handed tap-slap-bump-flutter-snap routine before he leaned back and put his seatbelt on. It was pretty cute. “Feeling better today?”

“What’s the matter?” Dad asked Tessa, pulling out of the driveway, pointing us back towards London. “Are you not feeling good?”

In the rearview mirror, I could see Tessa’s face, blank again. She shook her head; clearly Scott wasn’t supposed to have asked that, not in front of us. “It was just my stomach, Dad,” she said. “I’m fine now,” and then, to Scott, “Hey, did you and Charlie figure out where you’re going camping next week?”

“He wants to hit French River and do, like, a canoe trip,” Scott said after a half-second delay, taking the rudder and correcting course. “But there’s no way Mum’s going to let us. Plus it’s five hours north on 400 and Charlie’s truck is about ready to die.” He didn’t sound that disappointed about it.

“Bruce Peninsula is nice,” Dad suggested, directed neatly away from whatever was wrong with Tessa. I tried to tack when the conversational winds faltered, and asked a few questions about what Charlie was up to, when Scott planned to get his learner’s permit, how Danny liked Copenhagen, and then Tessa jumped in with a question about where the Moirs were going to watch the Canada Day fireworks, and soon enough we were in Ilderton, dropping off Scott without Dad noticing the way Tessa kept absently rubbing at her thighs with the heels of her hands, digging in hard. I did, though, and recognized it. 

_Oh_, I thought, and felt a sympathetic ache low in the hollow of my hips.

Scott noticed, too, glancing at her hands as he climbed out of the van to get his stuff from the back. Where Tessa’s face was a mask, his was a movie screen, a dozen frames flitting across in quick succession: concern, frustration, embarrassment, resignation, and something I couldn’t read, but which looked too old for his face. “Hey,” he said, and tapped on Tessa’s door after getting his bags. “Open up, kiddo,” he said, and she rolled her eyes, but opened the door and leaned out to give him a quick hug. “See you in a couple weeks, eh?”

“Yeah,” she said, finally smiling. “Try not to get eaten by a bear, okay?”

“Not a problem,” Scott said. “I’m faster than Charlie, so the bear’ll get him first.”

“Poor bear,” Tessa said, and Scott snorted.

“I’m gonna tell him you said that. Thanks again, Mr. Virtue,” he said, shouldering his bags, because the Moir boys were always polite to adults; Alma didn’t tolerate rudeness. “Bye, Jordan. See you, Tess.”

“See you,” she returned, eyes following him to the door, and Dad waited until he went inside the house before he turned to Tessa and said, “Kiddo? That’s new,” his eyebrows raised.

“It’s obnoxious,” Tessa said, ears flushing beneath the tight braids curling down to her shoulders. “He does it at school all the time, like I’m six or something.”

“It’s cute,” Dad said, and reached over and tugged at the end of one of her braids without looking. She winced. “I’m glad you’ve got him looking out for you over there, kiddo.” 

“I can look after myself just fine,” she said, quiet, but Dad wasn’t listening. He turned on the radio, searching for the Jays game, and I watched as she kneaded at her thighs the whole way home. 

We didn’t stop for milkshakes.

After dinner that night, Casey retreated back upstairs to his room and whatever game he was playing, Mum and Dad circled each other politely, polite until one snapped, polite and then sucked into yet another swirling argument, polite and then hissing at each other in voices that carried farther than they thought-- and I went and knocked on Tessa’s door, a bag in my hand.

“What,” I heard her say, muffled, and opened the door. She was curled like a comma on her bed. I went and sat on the edge, up by the pillows, and thought: _this is not my job_, but the people whose job it was were caught up in a whirlpool of their own making and I didn’t think they’d find their way out anytime soon, so I put my hand on her shoulder, rubbing the bony place where we should grow wings.

“How bad are the cramps?” I asked, and she took a deep breath under my hand and said, “Leave me alone, Jordan.”

“Not going to happen,” I told her, and meant it. “I know you hate it, but we’re going to talk about this, because you look like you haven’t slept in about a year.” She curled harder around the pillow she was holding. At least she wasn’t covering her ears to block out what I was saying. “Come on, Tess,” I said, trying to be patient, because nothing about this was fun for either of us. “Sit up for me. I come bearing gifts.”

She glared at me over her shoulder, but rolled herself upright. “I hate you a lot right now,” she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress.

“So do I,” I told her. Dug into the bag until I found the half-empty container of ibuprofen and water bottle I’d brought, and handed them to her. “Okay,” I said, watching her swallow two. “Let’s do this. This isn’t the first time, is it?” It wasn’t really a question, but it was better to phrase it that way.

She shook her head. “I got it last month.” Shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Mum doesn’t know?” I asked, and she shook her head again. “And you didn’t tell Linda?” Her host mum was a little weird, super religious in a way I didn’t understand, but nice enough. If she knew, she would have called Mum in a heartbeat. Tessa made a face, so I kept going. “Suzanne?”

“No,” she said, looking at the floor. “I thought about it, though.” Her hands were kneading at the tops of her legs again.

“My legs always feel weak the first couple of days,” I offered after a moment. “Weird deep cramps up in my hips and quads. There’s a couple of stretches that help, sometimes.” 

“Show me?” she asked, which I took to mean that she hurt a lot more than she was willing to admit, so I slid off the bed and exhaled into a slow forward front fold, pressing my hands to the floor and breathing deep. She stood up and mimicked me, bending at the waist like a marionette with her strings cut. I rolled back up, and showed her a few other poses down on the floor before saying, “Scott knows, right?”

She was on her back, knees to her chest, rocking a little, side-to-side. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I got it at practice, and figured it out when I went to go change to go home. And then he wouldn’t shut up until I told him what was wrong.” 

“I bet that was fun,” I said, leaning back against the bed. “Did he flip out?” 

A smile flashed across her face. “He turned so red I thought he would pop,” she said, and then, wonderingly, “He was really nice about it, though. He even asked if I needed him to go get-- stuff. Pads or whatever.”

“You had what you needed with you?” I checked, because Mum had started sending me to summer camp with pads when I was ten; even as distracted as she’d been lately, I couldn’t imagine she would mess up badly enough not to make sure Tessa knew the drill. 

Tess nodded. “Good,” I said. “And I’m glad Scott wasn’t a douche. Otherwise I was going to beat him up for you. And maybe destroy all his Axe shit while I was at it, jesus,” my nose wrinkling in disgust.

She laughed at that, loud and relaxed for the first time, and she said, “I know, oh my god, it’s so _awful_. It’s, like, a million times worse after practice and I don’t know how to tell him it’s bad without hurting his feelings.”

“Maybe his mum will tell him while he’s home. We could ask her to stage an intervention. Alma’s sensible,” I said, and Tess curled into a sitting position, scooting to sit next to me by the bed. “Feeling a little better?” I asked.

She shrugged. “A little,” she said. “They’re still not gone.”

I shook my head. “They probably won’t go away totally for a while. Just-- lots of water, and stretching, and you can take ibuprofen or something. If it’s really bad, we can get Mum to make you an appointment with the doctor. There’s a heating pad in the bag,” I said, and reached up on the bed to grab it. “Sometimes that helps.” I handed it over, and said, “Right. Let’s do the awkward stuff, okay?” 

“Okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders. Tough as nails, when it came right down to it. Brave as Achilles, sharp as talons, stubborn as stone: that was Tess.

“Good,” I said, took a deep breath, and pulled a pad, tampon, and condom out of the bag. And it _was_ awkward, and uncomfortable, and I was sincerely aware of how unqualified I was to stand in for a competent adult given my own recent failures in that field, but we stumbled our way through the most important parts, together.

My ass was numb by the time we got through everything. It wasn’t like Mum had never talked to her about puberty or sex or anything, or like it wasn’t discussed in school, but dealing with the physical reality-- especially as an athlete-- was different. And once she got over the embarrassment, Tessa asked a lot of questions, like she was preparing for a test and wanted to make sure she’d fully completed the study guide.

“Am I forgetting anything?” I asked, leaning my head back against the mattress. “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

Tessa shrugged. “Probably. Didn’t you say you forgot your philosophy midterm?” she asked, sly, and I wrapped my arm around her neck and pulled her in and knuckled at her hair, still in those painfully tight braids.

“Dad already addressed that topic today, thanks,” I said. “That, and how I should switch to business, and how Kevin never got a B and already had a job offer waiting when he was my age, and how I’m not living up to my potential and am, in general, a terrible disappointment. It was great; I’m sorry you missed it, it was like being eaten alive by a law firm.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said. A door slammed, loud, downstairs, and then a car started outside. We both pretended not to hear it.

“Not your fault,” I sighed. It was one of those nights when it seemed the only safe waters to sail were the ones at the edge of the world. “These have to be giving you a headache,” I said, and took the elastic off a braid and started undoing it. “You don’t have to pull it out at the roots for it to stay in place, you know.” I combed my fingers through the fine strands, then started on the other side. 

“Am I going to stop growing now?” she asked, leaning her head into my shoulder, and I said, “Probably not, you’re still tiny, shrimp,” absent and pulling at a tangle, and felt her freeze against me.

“Oh,” she said, and slumped in on herself, and I thought: _right, this is the real problem_. These are the shoals that founder us, unseen. I remembered then how frustrating it had been when I kept landing short on the beam, twelve and under-rotated in a way I hadn’t been the week before, my brain not recognizing the extra length of my legs, heels hitting and slipping, the bruises on my thighs less painful than the realization that I could love gymnastics as much as I wanted, but I wasn’t built for greatness. Story of my life.

“Hey,” I said, and put my hands on her shoulders and made her look at me. “Hey. You know there’s _nothing_ wrong with you, right? You’re gonna be as tall as you’re supposed to be, and you’ll stop feeling so clumsy, and everything will be fine,” but she was shaking her head, _no, no, no_, eyes swimming.

“We’re the same height,” she said, her voice a watery croak. “He noticed last week at practice, and-- and we need to start doing harder lifts, and what if-- I think I’m going to be too big,” she said. “And Scott’ll have to quit, like Danny, and he’s so _good_ and he loves it so much. He’ll _hate_ me, and Mum and Dad spent all this money and I know it’s a lot and they’re fighting and-- and I-- I’m trying so hard, and it’s just not _fair_.”

I pulled her in and let her cry, quiet and despairing, tight against my shoulder, trying to figure out what on earth to say. “Hey, no, shh,” I said, a lump in my throat. “Shh, Tess, it’ll be okay,” I said, and hoped truth found its way through, because how the fuck could any of us know.

“I wish I were someone else,” she said, muffled against my collarbone, and I shook my head, hard, and said, “Well, I don’t, okay?” sharp as flint. Pried her up from my shoulder and held her face between my hands, her cheeks wet under my thumbs. 

“I don’t want you to be anyone but who you are,” I said, trying to keep the wobble out of my voice. “Whoever that winds up being. No,” I said, holding her still, tied to the mast, as she tried to bury her head back down, “No, you listen to me. I know it’s a lot right now. I know, okay? But none of this is on you. None of it. You can’t help growing, and Scott knows that. He’s a dumbass, but he’s your friend and he knows that, too, okay? And Mum and Dad,” I said, words pouring out of my mouth like honey, like fire, “are fucking grown-ups and can handle the other shit. That’s on them, not on you. You lay that down and let them handle that. Do you hear me?”

She nodded, slow. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand; they were never more green than when she had been crying.

“Good,” I said, and wrapped her up against my chest, as much to comfort me as her, breathing slow and even, feathering my fingers over her spine. “We’ll figure it out, Tess,” I said. “It’s just-- rough seas right now,” I said, hardly knowing what came out my mouth, only that it was somehow true and beyond me. “We’ll be just fine. You and me and Mum and Casey and Kevin, we’re going to be just fine.”

“What about Dad?” Tessa said, damp against my collar.

I shrugged. “I dunno,” I said. That was the question, and not one I had an answer to. I didn’t think anyone did. “He owes me a milkshake.”

“He owes Mum an apology,” she said, and there was a harsh edge to her voice I hadn’t heard before.

“Mm,” I hummed. “The milkshake might be easier to get.” And then, the idea planted, shook her gently. “C’mon,” I said, and pulled her up, my legs protesting their long inaction. “We can take Mum’s car. I think I’ve got enough cash to cover a chocolate milkshake or two.”

We crept down to the kitchen, feet deliberate and slow on the edge of the stairs, as though we were trying not to draw the attention of some cavernous monster. I turned on the lights to find her keys, and instead found Mum, dry-eyed and tight-mouthed, sitting at the kitchen table, staring at nothing. She might have been cast in bronze.

“Oh,” I said, and turned the light back out. “Sorry.” I put out my hand behind me, as though I could hold Tess back from a slow-motion accident.

“No,” said Mum, pale hair shaking in the dark, moon on the water. “No, it’s fine, you can turn the lights on,” she said. And then, “Where were you girls going? It’s late.”

“Nowhere,” I said. Flicked the lights on again. 

Tessa took my hand and squeezed. “Jordan was going to take me for a milkshake,” she said. Straightened her shoulders and said, “I got my period.”

Mum’s face wavered, buckled, and settled into a smile that was as sad as I’d ever seen it. “Oh, my baby,” she said, and beckoned, her arms out for Tessa to crash into them. She dropped my hand and dove in gratefully. I hung back. “Both my girls all grown up, how did that happen,” she said, brushing the sharp waves of Tessa’s hair back from her face, searching.

“We didn’t have much of a choice,” I joked. It came out truer than I intended.

* * *

3 . The author is currently writing this at a coffee shop.  [But it’s worth thinking about.](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/a-conversation-about-starbucks-white-fear-and-being-black-in-public.html)


	3. Lotus eaters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one cuts off about halfway through. Sorry, y'all. I told you it was unfinished.

“I’m less familiar with this passage,” he says, approving. “But it had a sweet ache to it, like growing pains in summer.”

“Thank you,” she says. “I was thinking of book twelve and the sirens, and there’s a bit of Scylla and Charybdis in there as well.”

He frowns. “The monsters I understand, but there wasn’t much that could been seen as seduction, I didn’t think. They were together for the length of a car ride,” he says, “and while one could argue that there is a growing awareness, teetering on the edge of adolescent fancy, it’s a far cry to connect that to sirens. And the other romantic relationship in the story is clearly in the process of dissolving, if you’ll forgive me for mentioning it.”

She waves away his concern. “You’re forgiven,” she says, “although it’s unnecessary. But you misunderstand, I think, the central conceit of sirens. It isn’t your fault,” she says, placating. “It’s a problem of translation, one built up through years of patriarchal adherence to convention. Sirens,” she says, “aren’t beautiful, and they don’t seduce with their bodies or their voices. What is seductive about sirens is that, when they speak, they speak the truth. They know things, and that knowledge holds their listeners captive, like so many birds in a net.”4

He nods, and says, “A few points of clarification, then, if you don’t mind?”

“Go for it,” she says.

“Point the first,” he says, “is the implication of the story that you, by speaking truth, are a siren?”

“I have no idea,” she says. “The story was there in front of me, and I just told it. And I feel I’m missing too much in the way of wings and feathers to qualify as a siren. But I might be, if the narrative demands it of me.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “Point the second, then: was it true?”

“Was what true?” she asks.

“The story,” he says. “Because you could only be a siren if the story were true. So was it?”

“Was yours?” she asks. “I don’t mean to argue, but we’ve both established that this is fiction, and the general rule is that fiction isn’t true. But there is more than one sort of truth or untruth, and I would argue that the notion of fiction being untrue relies more upon its historical untruth than its narrative untruth. That is, its truth is inherently ‘contested, argued over and perspectival.’”5

“I have no idea what that means,” he confesses. 

“Then you should check the footnotes and read the associate article on your own time,” Jordan says, curt. “Because I think the author intends to us to move out of this interlude soon, and an explanation would be overly tedious at present.”

“Wouldn’t want to be tedious,” Danny says. “Alright. Let’s change the tone, shall we? He told me this one

-*-

In fits and starts and slips in conversation, the way he does when he wants to tell the truth and is afraid to do so: stories bubble out of him like springs from the rocky hillside, then, unstoppable. He didn’t mean to tell it, not in its entirety. But he handed over enough shards that I would be a poor archaeologist of narrative to not know that this is what happened when she stopped being just Tessa, and changed, or else he did, and became someone else entirely.

March in Copenhagen was less dreary than February, but only by degrees. There was a skin of ice over the curved rectangle of the Lakes as I ran that morning, twenty-six and lost, four thousand miles from home, and I stopped on Fredensbro bridge to watch the city wake up around me. Robert Plant wailed about driving ships to new lands in my ears, and I wondered if it was time to give it up and find a different path home. 

My phone vibrated against my hip. I dug it out of my pocket with cold hands, flipped it open. Scott, and I did the math in my head: eight thirty in the morning in Copenhagen was two thirty back home. I answered, heart in my throat, imagining car wrecks on icy roads, heart attacks and the sterile lights of waiting rooms.

“Hey,” I said, my breath still heavy from my run. “Everything okay?”

There was noise in the background, pulsing, and a rustle of cloth, and then, indistinct, “--fine, White, fuck off, I’m tryin’ to talk to Danny, okay?” Something rattled, and then there was a thud, like he’d dropped the phone. “Shit,” I could hear him say, something brushing static across the mic. It sounded like a door closed behind him.

“You there?” I asked, not sure if I should be amused or concerned. He was drunk as fuck. “Scott, you dipshit, if you don’t talk to me, I’m calling Mum.”

“Danny!” he said. Sounded hurt. “Don’t do that. Why would you do that, Danny?”

“I dunno,” I said, “because you’re a dumbass who’s drunk and making international calls on Mum and Dad’s plan?”

He was suspiciously quiet. “Hey,” I said, leaning on the handrail. There was an eider swimming unconcernedly in the narrow path of ice-free water at the center of Sortedams Sø, placid and ordinary by the morning light. “You okay?”

“‘M pretty drunk,” he admitted, and his voice was echoing a bit, wherever he was. “There was a party,” he said, like I couldn’t have guessed. It would have been a house party somewhere in Canton, and I didn’t need him to tell me how the music pulsed like a heartbeat, how the kitchen counters were sticky with spilled mixers and littered with half-empty Solo cups, how the rooms were half dark and overheated with the clutch of bodies moving, so rigorously disciplined and abstemious nine days out of ten, now raucous with the coiled frustration of youth. Some things don’t need witnesses to be understood.

“Sounded like there still is one,” I said, mild. There was a beat, audible beyond his breath. “A rager during the lead up to Worlds, really?”

  
“Shut up,” he grumbled, “‘S one night, Danny. Stop coachin’ me and shut up. ‘S just-- for fun,” he said, and this sounded like an argument he was having with someone else. Probably Tessa; half our conversations involved his exasperated insistence that she was driving him nuts, and not in a good way. The other half involved him studiously not talking about her at all. “We’re allowed to have some _fun_, doesn’t mean we’re not being ser’ous about things.” 

“Sounds like you’re having a ball,” I said. A cyclist rang her bell at me as she passed behind me; I was blocking part of the path. I nodded an apology and walked to end of the bridge to find a bench, and asked, “Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

“She told me she wasn’t even coming tonight. She said she had _homework_.” He sounded bewildered, and the rest came out in pieces over the next half hour. I put it back together as best I could.

He was seeing a pretty dark-haired girl then, I forget which one, but she wasn’t in town that weekend. Instead, he went alone to the party, alone with Charlie and a few others after some early drinks, fully intending to drink and dance until he stopped thinking about the sting of the latest nettled barb Marina had planted under his skin, until he stopped thinking about how frustrated and angry Tess sounded all the time now, about how everything outside of his body ached.

Tessa wasn’t coming, she had said, and he was relieved and felt guilty about it.

“Don’t, man,” Charlie slurred when he said as much. “You know she hates these things, and when she comes you spend all your time worried about her. Besides, you’ve been at each other’s throats for weeks.”

“That obvious?” he asked as they shuffled up the salt-strewn walk to the front porch where the smokers gathered, perched on the rails like bronze-feathered birds of prey. He held his breath as they passed through the nicotine cloud and opened the door. Scott wasn’t entirely sure whose house it was-- there was a tenuous connection to Arctic Edge, maybe through someone’s roommate or something, but the smokers out front were as good as a billboard reading, _This is a far and alien land_.

Charlie shrugged. “You look like you’re working, out there,” he said. “During practice. Didn’t used to.”

“It’s practice,” Scott said. “And we’ve got Worlds coming up,” he said, pushing through the crowd at the door to someone’s bedroom where a mountain of parkas and scarves covered the mattress. “Of course we look like we’re working. We _are_ working.”

“I’m just saying,” Charlie said, pulling off his toque and scrubbing his hands through the cloud of curls, “you’re not doing your freaky brain twin thing right now and it shows.”

Sitting on an iron bench an ocean and a quarter of a day ahead, Scott told me, “I don’ know what he means,” and he sounded tired. “We’re not twins. Freaky brain twins, fuck, I don’t even know what she’s thinking half the time.” 

“Half isn’t so bad,” I said, thinking about all the times Sheri and I talked past each other, about how Kristina seemed to speak an entirely different language from the one I knew. “It’s better than most of us get. One of the pairs over here, I swear, it’s a car wreck ninety percent of the time. She goes for a turn, and he’s on the other side of the rink looking for her every time.”

“It’s not on the ice,” Scott said, and I would have put money on him waving that concern away with a hand: _of course we’re always good on ice_, unaware of how strange that was to the rest of us. “Like, that half is okay, Charlie’s full of shit and jus’ trying to fuck with me, yeah? I get it. But she said she didn’ want to come, and then came here like _that_ and went home with fucking Fedor,” he said, venomous, “and he’s a _dick_ and she knows it--”

“Wait,” I said, because I didn’t have a sister, but Tess was close enough to count. “Marina’s son? He’s basically my age,” I said, and grimaced at the thought. Tess was a cute kid, but seventeen was worlds away from mid-twenties. “Was she sober?” I asked, worried, and tried to figure out if this was something I should be calling Mum or Mrs. Virtue about, or at least someone in the same time zone.

“She said she was,” Scott said, grudging. “But I didn’ know she was going to be there, so I wasn’t watching to check.” He went quiet for a minute, then said, “We argued about it, and she told me to leave her alone. That it was nice that someone didn’t have to fake wanting her.”

I winced. Wondered if Scott had realized what I’d come to suspect over the summer when I took a few weeks to go home and let Mum fuss over me with relief. They had driven back to visit the first weekend I was home, taking Scott’s car, and Tess had been the one to get out of the driver’s side when they pulled into the driveway, her hair a surprising jolt of red above a pale face and bare arms, looking proud of herself. 

“Good job, T,” Scott had said as I’d gone out to the front porch to greet them, and she tossed him the keys over the top of the car. “You get to drive for the next two years, eh?”

She shook her head. Said, “I’m not going to be your personal chauffeur, Scott.”

He came around the back of the car and took a bag from her, sliding the strap up his shoulder at the same time his arm went around her waist. “Sure you will,” he said, and pressed a thoughtless, smacking kiss above her ear. “I just have to figure out how to bribe you.”

.

.

.

(Author's note: And that's all I've got, in terms of narrative, guys. There's some other bits and bobs that I'll throw into a grab-bag chapter, but that's where the narrative portion ends.)

* * *

4\. This entirely true. Sirens (who are NOT, by the by, mermaids: they are some hybrid of women and birds, although we lack a coherent full description of them) make a very brief appearance in The Odyssey, and the lines which mention them contain no reference to their beauty, but rather to the knowledge which pours from their mouths. [ Wilson explains more on the subject here ](https://twitter.com/emilyrcwilson/status/970406696836304897?lang=en). She’s also a rather good follow on Twitter.

5\. Clark, John A. "The Problem of Truth in Educational Research: The Case of the Rigoberta Menchú ‘Controversy’." 2007. (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ766601.pdf)


	4. Bits of unfinished frame story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are basically some writing notes that I have on how the rest of the story goes. I've written out bits of it, and there are (still) footnotes. And terrible jokes. But no narrative (or verse!) portions.

“The point of the story isn’t to hold back on the emotional befuddlement and fuckery: the point of the story is give voice to the notion that we already know how it ends,” she says.

“How it  _ should _ end,” he says. “There’s quite a ways to go yet, one hopes.”

“How it should end,” she agrees. “Assuming that life works like fiction.”

“Life is never like fiction,” Danny says. “Except this one time--”

-*-

(Bit of the Odyssey to draw from: " how /  he worked to save his life and bring his men /  back home")

Trying to repair things with Tessa after her first surgery; not great, but ends on a hopeful note.

-*-

“That isn’t how it went,” she says, certain.

“It is,” he says. “I was there for far too much of it. It seemed unnecessary, but: if a character experiences emotional growth without a secondary character to affirm and react to it, has it really happened?”

“I don’t doubt your presence in the scene, it was quite evident that it was constructed in such a way as to require a witness,” she says. “But I do doubt the reliability of your narration, as I suspect that the author wants to play us off each other.”

“Ah,” he says, nodding. “We should have guessed: we’re to be two narrative halves of a whole, each missing something that the other perceives.”

“Thematic parallels representing our oblivious siblings,” she says. “Of course.”

“Consider the author,” he says. “It’s a Borges reference, wouldn’t you say?"5

“Obvious,” she says. “And it still isn’t how it went.”

“How did it go, then?” he asks. “We’re clearly meant to fill in the gaps on this. And you’d best find a new way of telling the same story, or else the audience will get bored.”

“So will I,” says Jordan. “Let us try it the old way, then. If it worked for Homer--”

-*-

Same story as before, but this time in iambic pentameter, and uglier. 

(Note: I've actually got most of this written, but-- dude, sharing unfinished prose is one thing. Sharing unfinished poetry is Quite Another. So it isn't going to make an appearance. Just imagine something, okay?)

-*-

“That was actually fucking impressive,” he says.

“I know,” she says.

“Like, for real, that was legitimate iambic pentameter in a fanfic about Canadian figure skaters, and I was not expecting that,” he says. He looks around. “Are we still adhering to the pretense that this is a coffee shop? The author hasn’t mentioned anything about it in several interludes, and frankly, if I have to compete with that, I’m going to need something stronger than an espresso.”

“I think, given the constructivist nature of language and the clear post-modernist authorial intent for this story, you can just refer to a flagon of mead before you launch into any Skaldic verses,” she says, and toasts him with a brimming flagon. 

“No thanks, I’m allergic to kennings,” he says, and does a defiant shot of tequila.6

“Fair enough,” she says. “Well?”

“Well, what?” he asks. There’s a pint in his hand that wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Since the structure appears to be that we alternate on the narrative progression, it’s your turn,” she says. “Also, does your next story really require that much alcohol to make it bearable?”

“I am considering this an act of experimentation,” he says, and takes a protracted drink. The pint refills itself. “My hypothesis is this: if this is fiction, then it will not matter how much alcohol I consume in the course of this interlude. I suspect I could drink the entirety of a whisky distillery and not be allowed to black out. Too much disruption to the narrative, you see.”

“You really don’t want to tell the next story, do you,” she says.

“Oh, hanged god, no,” he says, and looks sadly at his ineffective pint. “It’s so fucking awkward for everyone involved.”

“Might as well get it over with,” she says. “If you don’t start soon, the author’s just going to force a transition, regardless of whether or not it feels natural to the interlude.”

“An excellent point,” Danny says, suddenly ready to move the fuck on and tell another story. “Say, did you know--”

-*-

Odyssey bit to play with: He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, /  they ate the Sun God’s cattle 

(Scott gets caught doing something humiliating-- jerking off? Drunkenly rambling about T? Maybe both? Regardless, results in confrontation and realization.)

-*-

“I am so sorry,” she says.

“So am I,” he says, morose. 

“I feel so unclean,” she says, “knowing that. Because while the conceit has been that we two are exchanging stories unknown to the other-- and while there may be an element of validity to this notion-- the structure ignores the probability of our individual relationship with the other’s sibling. Your brother,” she says, “might as well be my own, in the context of our combined histories. And now I have this story to contend with. Thank you for that.”

“It can’t be unknown, though,” he says. “Regardless of whether or not it’s fiction or truth, it’s out there, now. You carry it in your head, now, like Metis.”

“You just want to make someone else suffer through that trauma with you,” she says. “I find this deeply unkind.”

“Yeah, well,” he agrees. “Try not thinking about that the next time the two of them come over for dinner.”

“Shit,” she says, and then, “Did you just give away the ending?”

“Not necessarily,” he says. “It’s possible for two people, totally separate from each other, to come over to another person’s home for dinner, with no implications of a relationship beyond that of close friends. In most situations it wouldn’t even be a question.”

“This is not most situations,” she says. 

“I know,” he sighs.

“This is the codependency World Championship. The overly-intimate Olympics. This is some Neruda-level shit.”

“I know,” he says.

“Like, this is _ I wait for you like a lonely house _ ,  _ so close your eyes close as I fall asleep _ , _ in me all that fire is repeated _ type mutual pining,” she said.7 “I don’t think we can pretend otherwise.”

“I  _ know _ ,” he says. “But consider: have we been trying to pretend otherwise?” he asks. “The central conceit is that we, the narrators and audience, are united in our understanding of the ultimate arc of the story, whilst the central characters fight against the tides of fate and we all yell and throw popcorn at the screen.”

.

.

.

(Author's note: And that's it. For real. That's, like, 11 thousand words of nonsense I'm not going to finish. Do what you like with it.)

* * *

5\.  It is definitely a Borges reference: “ [ Nada me cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero esas páginas no me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás, yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mi podrá sobrevivir en el otro. ](https://genius.com/Jorge-luis-borges-borges-y-yo-annotated) ”

6\. Kenning: a phrase which circles around an idea or expression, rather than using a simpler, more direct term. While this literary device is sometimes found in Old English, it is most commonly associated with Norse poetry. For example, blood becomes “battle-sweat,” Odin becomes “the hanged god,” and a sword is “an icicle of blood.” And for anyone unfortunate enough to have been forced to read _ Beowulf _ in Brit Lit: this is what that whole whale-road bullshit was on about.

7\. Neruda, Pablo. "Sonnet LXV," "Sonnet XVII," and "If You Forget Me." _The Poetry of Pablo Neruda_. 2005.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so--
> 
> No, actually, I have no coherent explanation, except that I made some throwaway comment a while back about how I kinda wanted to write a story about Danny and Jordan shooting the shit about their respective siblings, and I kept thinking about how I use them as narrative devices, and also the weirdness of RPF in general, and I have this Thing about deconstruction of text? And Emily Wilson’s absolutely stellar translation of the Odyssey has been sticking in my head of late, and so when I thought, _I keep wanting to use Jordan like a Greek chorus_, my brain immediately said: _Sing me a song, O muse_, and yeah. Things ensued.
> 
> The footnotes, well. I’m an historian by training, and a nerd by practice, and all good epics need footnotes for clarity’s sake.


End file.
